Ok, reading through dogs with a couple buddies and there's a 2-fold question we're stumped on.

Part 1: If you're in a conflict against someone/something you're trying to save/help, how does fallout get applied?Like, in the example, healing a kid. Say you stoop down, lay on hands, annoint with earth, use medical skills, whatever, and in the course of the conflict, the kid "takes a blow" a few times. Does the kid now take fallout? Is the fallout applied to the injuries? How do injuries take fallout???

Part 2: Wait...hold on! We just used ceremony! That means we're not even talking d4's, we've moved into the wide word of d8s!!! That kid (or maybe his injuries?) on a bad roll, could end up with 16 fallout! He's dying cuz we healed him?? What?

Hi,look at who is in conflict. Let's say a boy got wounded and you want to help him. Then it's your character against the GM's dice representing the wound with the stakes of "the life of the boy".

If you take the blow within this conflict, you roll for fallout for your character. Usually the Blows you have to suffer are non-physical so often it is just a temporary shock your character is suffering. If you roll long-term fallout it could be interpreted as blood all over your coat (reduce the coats dice) or some trauma your character suffered (e.g. the trait "I could not save the boy 1d4").

I suggest you reread the section about ceremonial fallout. It's only useful directly against demons or in context with the souls of the faithful. It's always only the GM who suffers the consequences of higher fallout because of ceremony.

Take a look at p. 68, the GM's option if nobody cares about the fallout. If there is no follow on conflict, then the fallout really doesn't matter. It isn't any different from if you have a conflict with an NPC, and everything is just settled, and that NPC won't be showing up in a conflict again (thus fallout for the NPC really just doesn't matter, even to the extent of, for example, giving the NPC a 1d4 relationship with the PC or a trait that says something about the conflict just resolved).

Also, make sure the raises are something the GM can't ignore, taking the blow should have some affect in the fiction.

One way to think about fallout is that it is just reinforcing the fiction that arose from the conflict. The injury/dying/death results happen to be a pretty concrete way of reinforcing fiction that included significant violence.

Ok, thought the answer was something like that. So basically fallout in situations like that get allocated against the non-human force/effect at work (the GM) and not a character or NPC, and just fall into the dark pit of "Fallout no one cares about."

As for ceremony is it ALWAYS only against a non-human entity? I thought you could use it against sorcerers and such? And even if I use ceremony against a faithful man's soul - he still doesn't get the fallout it just evaporates into "Fallout no one cares about?"

Reithan: Not exactly! Fallout ALWAYS goes to the person who, seeing the raise, takes the blow. The fallout dice depend upon the effect of taking the blow on the person who took the blow.

I raise: He shoots you!You take the blow: you get d10 fallout, because a bullet hits you.

-vs-

I raise: He shoots Sister Mercy!You take the blow: you get d4 fallout, because a bullet doesn't hit you.

For healing conflicts, it's (usually) the healer who takes the blow, so it's (usually) the healer who gets the fallout.

There's no such thing as fallout no one cares about. If you use ceremony against a faithful man's soul, his soul gets the fallout.

The best thing for you to do, if all this isn't clear, is to give us an example of the situation you don't understand, with specific raises and numbers and stuff. You can just make it up, but an example will let us give solid answers.

Was gonna post up a full play-by-play but I think I can boil this down pretty quick to the actual heart of the matter.Say some faithful man is about to go commit some serious crime, you're in a conflict to try to stop him and things aren't going well. So you decide to appeal to his very soul using some quick ceremony.

Your raise overpowers him and he ends up having to take the blow. (or whatever led up to this point)At the end of the conflict, what happens to the fallout from that blow?? It's ceremony applied against his soul right? How does one applied fallout against a soul?

Also, if you apply ceremonial fallout using it against a sorcerer or something, assuming this CAN kill them with sufficiently harsh fallout roll (I remember that 1-2 of the ceremonies was d8 fallout. 2d8 can become 16 which can easily be deadly.)

I guess the real heart of the question here is when you apply fallout vs something that isn't a person-what does it do?

There's a determination you have to make at the table, case by case. It's the GM's job to make this determination, not the group's, so don't discuss it or anything. It's your sole call.

This guy takes the blow. Either way, he gets the fallout dice - they don't just vanish. He took the blow, he gets fallout, always.

Does his soul take the blow, or does just, you know, he? His flesh, his earthly stuff, his brain and body.

If his soul takes the blow, he takes ceremonial fallout dice. To his soul, making the sign of the tree is different from just talking to him, so he takes d6s.

If just he takes the blow, not his soul, he takes d4 fallout. Making the sign of the tree is just a social interaction, if it's not his soul taking the blow, so he takes d4s.

My advice, non-binding, is to decide this way: Is it his soul that's fighting against the Dogs, is his soul their opponent? If so, then yes, it's his soul that takes the blow, and thus he gets ceremonial fallout dice. (This is why Sorcerers always take ceremonial fallout: their souls are always the Dogs' enemy.)

Wow, that's pretty much the opposite interpretation I'd expected. Do you have any stories or examples about how this mechanic works/ed out in play? I suppose this'd definitely fall on the higher end of the supernatural scale? You invoke ceremony on someone who's about to commit a murder to make them stop, they turn around stunned and fall down dead?

Neah, that's probably somewhere in the middle. If you were high on the supernatural scale spirit flames would erupt from the Dog's fingertips and engulf the dude in purging fire until the demons crawled out of his steaming body and flew away into the netherworld on their batlike wings.

Now as GM, you have to take that into account when you decide whether it's the person's soul taking the blow. If you're thinking "oh man, they're putting consecrated earth on his forehead? This could kill him," that's when you have him take ceremonial fallout. If you're not thinking that, then it's not his soul taking the blow, and you should have him take d4 fallout.

Look at the parallel here:

GM, raising: She pulls the trigger and blows her father's head off.Player, taking the blow: I try to stop her but too late. His brains are all over me.Player takes d4 fallout.

Player, raising: I mark his forehead with consecrated earth and command his soul to obedience.GM, taking the blow: That bothers him a little but he can't stop you. You can see his soul struggling to obey, and you can see him smack it back down.GM takes d4 fallout.

Dogs' conflict rules allow massive collateral damage without any attention to fallout. In the first example, the father character doesn't take d10 fallout, because he's just an NPC caught in the crossfire. In the second example, the NPC's soul doesn't take d8 fallout, for the same reason. In both examples, the person taking the blow gets d4 fallout, because all they did was let something happen to someone else.

Player, raising: I mark his forehead with consecrated earth and command his soul to obedience.GM, taking the blow: That bothers him a little but he can't stop you. You can see his soul struggling to obey, and you can see him smack it back down.GM takes d4 fallout.

AH! So commanding the souls of the faithful isn't the same as commanding the faithful? :o